The Chosen Ones?

I've always been taught that Christians are God's children - his chosen people, as it were, as we are the ones who are connected with him through Christ; in essence we are the human element in his final covenant with mankind. But something that has always bothered me is how Christians still refer to Israel or the Jews as still being God's chosen people and that God's eternal favour must always rest upon them for some reason unbeknownst to me.

So which is it? Are God's chosen people the Jews, or are they the Christians (not to suggest that a Jew cannot be a Christian, but when I say 'Jew' I mean in the orthodox religious sense rather than the cultural observance), because it strikes me as silly to suggest that it can be both, seeing as how the two factions basically represent spritual notions that are diametrically opposed to each other (i.e. Jesus IS the son of God / the Messiah vs. Jesus was NOT messiah and such beliefs are tantamount to heresy.)

It seems to me, and is my interpretation of the Old Testament covenant versus the New Testament convenant, that the racial inheiritance of the Jews as the children and chosen people of Yahweh in the Old Testament (and subsequently doctrines and practices of the Jewish people up until the birth of Christ) were basically a symbol, or a foreshadowing of the SPIRITUAL inheiritance that would be brought about by the death and resurrection of Christ. The position of the Jews in the Old Testament effectively became the position of Christ's disciples in the New Testament (and into current times).

What this amounts to for current-time Christians is an interesting conundrum: Christendom (also spelled "Christianism"), as the political and religious institution that it most assuredly is, seems bent on defending the honour of Israel against her enemies at all costs, almost as if, in any given conflict, the Israeli people are incapable of doing wrong and we must pray for Israel to prevail because they are "God's chosen people".

In reality, the state of Israel as it stands today is a militaristic Zionist nightmare of extremist proportions with a long history of oppressing the Palestinian people in all sorts of horrible ways. The Israeli military is guilty of any number of homicidal and basically genocidal practices which, thanks mostly to the Christianist West, has the most technologically advances war machine to be found anywhere in the world, including (but not limited to) nuclear weapons and other WMDs.

Strangely enough, while the U.S., U.N., etc love to demonize countries like Iran and try to bully them into giving up their rights to nuclear energy, no one ever balks at all of the nukes possessed by dear old Israel.

I found it hard to swallow Israel's latest escapades against Lebanon, and the way in which the US backed them. It was basically the equivalent of some Canadian splinter group (let's say the FLQ, for instance) kidnapping a couple of U.S. police officers and the U.S. responding by bombing the living crap out of every major Canadian city and killing thousands of people who literally had nothing at all to do with anything.

And yet, surprise, surprise, most of the Christians I know were praying up a storm for poor, embattered Israel, God's favourite, chosen country. I just don't get it, and personally I think it is a deception of the enemy in the worst possible way.

Upon continuing my little exploration of the Gospels the other day I came upon this verse, which seems to confirm what I have been thinking regarding the passing of God's favour from the political state of Israel to the spiritual Church of Christ - it is the parable of the Evil Farmers found in Matthew 21:33-44:

33"Now listen to this story. A certain landowner planted a vineyard, built a wall around it, dug a pit for pressing out the grape juice, and built a lookout tower. Then he leased the vineyard to tenant farmers and moved to another country. 34At the time of the grape harvest he sent his servants to collect his share of the crop. 35But the farmers grabbed his servants, beat one, killed one, and stoned another. 36So the landowner sent a larger group of his servants to collect for him, but the results were the same.
37"Finally, the owner sent his son, thinking, `Surely they will respect my son.'
38"But when the farmers saw his son coming, they said to one another, `Here comes the heir to this estate. Come on, let's kill him and get the estate for ourselves!' 39So they grabbed him, took him out of the vineyard, and murdered him.
40"When the owner of the vineyard returns," Jesus asked, "what do you think he will do to those farmers?"
41The religious leaders replied, "He will put the wicked men to a horrible death and lease the vineyard to others who will give him his share of the crop after each harvest."
42Then Jesus asked them, "Didn't you ever read this in the Scriptures?
`The stone rejected by the builders has now become the cornerstone. This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous to see.'
43What I mean is that the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation that will produce the proper fruit. 44Anyone who stumbles over that stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.